Christine+Hetland

In early 1920, Christina Hetland, 39 years old and divorced, was admitted to Chicago's Swedish Covenant Hospital, suffering in infection caused by an abortion perpetrated somewhere in the city. Most of Chicago's abortionists were either physicians or midwives. Dr. John M. Klinck was identified by authorities as the perpetrator of Christina's abortion. Klinck was an allopath, licensed in Illinois in 1907 after graduating Barnes Medical College of St. Louis in 1905.

The young woman, who had come to the US from Norway and who after her divorce had found work as a maid in a Chicago home, died on March 1.

Dr. Klinck and a man named Carl Blomgren were held by the coroner but, for reasons I have not been able to determine, both cases were stricken off.

Keep in mind that things that things we take for granted, like antibiotics and blood banks, were still in the future. For more about abortion in this era, see [|Abortion in the 1920s].

or more on pre-legalization abortion, see [|The Bad Old Days of Abortion]

 Sources:
 * [|Homicide in Chicago Interactive]
 * Death certificate
 * Untitled clipping, Chicago Daily Tribune, March 6, 1920



include component="tagCloud"